“You do not answer me,” he cried, his voice growing more hoarse and intense, while I stood there with my heart palpitating, feeling as if I ought to run to Miss Carr’s help.

“I will not answer such a question,” she said angrily; “but I will tell you this: that I have looked upon myself as your betrothed wife; do not make me think upon our engagement with regret.”

“Forgive me, Miriam, pray forgive me,” he said in a low, pleading voice. “It is my wretched temper that has got the better of me. Say you forgive me, Miriam, or I shall be ready to make an end of myself. There, there, don’t take away this little hand.”

“Leave me now, I beg of you,” she said in a low, pained voice.

“Yes, directly, sweet,” he whispered; “but let there be an end of this, my darling. Say – in a month’s time – you will be my wife, and then I shall know I am forgiven.”

“I forgive you your cruel, passionate words, John,” she said, in such a tone that I began once more to look out of the window, wondering whether Mrs John Lister would be as kind to me as Miss Carr.

“And, in a month to-day, you will make me a happy man?”

“I cannot promise that,” she said after a pause.

“Yes, yes, you can, dearest – my own love!” he cried; and I felt now as if I should like to open the window and step out on the balcony.

“No, I cannot promise that, John,” she repeated. “You must – we must wait.”

“Then it is as I say,” he cried, evidently springing up from her feet, and stamping up and down the room. “You are a cruel, cold, heartless girl, and I’ll come begging and pleading no more. Our engagement holds good,” he said bitterly; “and you shall name the day yourself, and we shall be a happy pair, unless I have blown out my brains before we’re wed.”

I heard the little drawing-room door close loudly, descending steps, and then the front door shut almost with a bang, and from where I stood I saw Mr Lister, looking very handsome and well dressed, with a bouquet in his button-hole, stride hastily down the street, cutting at imaginary obstacles with his cane, and as he turned the corner I heard from the next room a low moan, and Miss Carr’s voice, saying:

“God help and teach me! I am a wretched woman! How shall I act?”

Chapter Thirty Four.
I Take the News to my Friends

“Wretched!” I thought, “in the midst of wealth, and loved by that passionate, handsome man.” Then I recalled how I had often heard of lovers’ quarrels, and supposed that this was one that would soon be made up.

I felt very uncomfortable, and wondered what I ought to do. There was a deep silence in the next room that became painful, and I wondered whether Miss Carr had gone; but directly after I heard such a low bitter sobbing that it went to my heart, and, unable to bear it longer, I went to the door, looked in, and saw her half-lying on the couch, with her face buried in the pillow, weeping bitterly.

I hesitated for a moment, and then went in unheard over the soft thick carpet, and kneeling down, I took the inert hand hanging down, and kissed it.

In a moment she stood up with pale and angry face, flinging me off as if I had stung her.

“Oh, Antony, my boy; is it you?” she cried; and flinging her arms round me, she let her head fall upon my shoulder, and went passionately and long, while I tried to utter some feeble platitude to soothe her.

The storm passed off suddenly, and she wiped her swollen eyes.

“I had forgotten that you were there, Antony,” she said. “I have had a great trouble.”

She spoke with her face averted, and she was trying now to remove the traces of her tears.

“You could not hear what was said?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Carr. I did not wish to, but I heard every word.”

“Oh!”

She turned her wild eyes upon me, and her pale face flushed crimson as she rose to leave the room, hurrying away and leaving me wondering whether I ought to go.

I had just concluded that I ought, and, taking up a sheet of paper, I had written a few lines saying how very sorry I was that I had been an unwilling listener, when she came back with her hair re-arranged, and looking pale and calm.

“Were you writing to me, Antony?” she said.

“Yes, Miss Carr.”

“Let me see.”

She read that which I had written, and smiled sadly. Then, tearing up the note, she took my hand and led me once more to the couch.

“I am sorry that you heard what passed, Antony,” she said; “but since I have known you, I have gradually grown to look upon you as a friend as well as a protégé; you have told me your little history, and every time I have seen you, you have shown me the fruit of the teachings of those to whom you were very dear. I feel quite happy in knowing that you, as the son of a gentleman, Antony, will hold all that you have heard quite sacred.”

“If you will only believe in and trust me,” I cried.

“I do believe in and trust you, Antony,” she said warmly. “Now I am going to ask you to leave me, and come again to-morrow, after you have been to the engineer’s office. I am not well, and I should be glad to be alone.”

I rose, and as she held out her hand I took it and kissed it reverently – so reverently, that she drew me to her, and touched my forehead with her lips.

“Go now, Antony,” she said, “and I think it will be better that you should not return to the printing-office. I will arrange with Mr Ruddle about that. A letter from me will be sufficient. And look here, Antony: you will come here to me every Saturday, and Sunday too, if you like. You need stand upon no ceremony – tut come. You will not be sorry to leave the office?”

“Oh no,” I said; “but I shall regret leaving Mr Hallett.”

I thought it was fancy then, as I seemed to see a spasm shoot through her. She said no more to me, but pressed something into my hand, and I went downstairs.

I felt very proud as I made my way along the streets, wondering what was in the packet Miss Carr had given me, and longing for an opportunity to open it.

The park seemed the most suitable place, and, making my way there, I lay down on the soft turf in a secluded place, opened the packet, and found in it a letter and a purse containing two five-pound notes.

The letter was dated the night before, and it was very brief:

“My dear Antony, —

“I have thought that you may need several things in commencing your new life, and as I wish you to appear as a gentleman’s son who means to work earnestly, I should provide serviceable clothes. I leave the rest to your common-sense and discretion.

“Yours affectionately, —
“Miriam Carr.”

“My dear Antony,” “yours affectionately,” I repeated to myself; and as I lay there, after safely placing the note and purse in my pockets, I wished earnestly that the dead could know and thank one who had so evidently my welfare at heart.

Mary soon knew of my good fortune, but did not seem at all surprised.

“No, my dear, it’s nothing more than natural,” she said, as I partook of tea with her; and in her affection for me she tried very hard to make me bilious with the amount of butter in which she soaked my toast. “You being a gentleman’s son, and having had a par and a mar, it was no more than one might expect, for gentlefolks to take notice of you. That Miss Carr’s a real lady, and I shouldn’t wonder if she was to leave you no end of money when she died.”

“Oh, Mary!” I cried, “just as if I wanted Miss Carr to die and leave me her money. I mean to earn some for myself, and when I get rich, you and Revitts shall come and live with me.”

“That we will,” said Mary. “I’ll be your cook, Master Antony, and Bill shall be – shall be – ”

“Bailiff and steward.”

“Or else gardener,” she said. “So you’re going to buy some new clothes, are you?”

“Yes, Mary; I must go well dressed to the engineer’s.”

“Then I should buy two more suits,” said Mary eagerly. “Have a good dark blue for Sundays, with gilt buttons, and for every day have invisible green.”

I shook my head.

“No, I must have black still, Mary, and grey,” I said.

“I wouldn’t dear; I’d have blue, and as for invisible green, you wouldn’t know as it wasn’t black.”

However, Mary came to my way of thinking, and my choice of new things was in no wise outré.

I seemed to be plunged into a perfect atmosphere of love just then, for I left Revitts smiling foolishly at Mary, whose face reflected the lover as perfectly as a mirror, and went on to Hallett’s, where I unconsciously found myself mixed up with another trouble of the kind.

I have grown wiser since, but in those days it was a puzzle to me why people could not be friends and fond of one another without plunging into such heart-breaking passionate ways, to their own discomfort and that of all whom they knew.

I was rather later than usual at the Halletts’, and on going upstairs, full of my good news, I found that Mrs Hallett was in bed, and Linny with her brother.

I ran up, tapped, and went in according to my custom, and then drew back for it was evident that something was wrong, but Hallett called me to stay.

“We have no secrets from you, Antony,” he said excitedly. “You know what has taken place from the first, and you are as much Linny’s friend as mine.”

“Then if he is,” cried Linny, stamping her little foot, “I’ll appeal to him.”

“Why, Linny,” I said, “what is the matter?”

“Matter!” she cried, sobbing passionately, “have I not given up to him in all he wished? have not I obeyed him and been more like a prisoner here than his sister? And now he is not satisfied.”

“I am satisfied, my child,” he said kindly. “But go on: what have I done?”

“Done?” cried Linny; “wounded me where you knew my heart was sore; looked upon my every act with suspicion.”

“No, my child,” he said quietly, as he watched the pretty, wilful little thing more in grief than anger. “You know how happy we have been, these last few weeks, since you have had confidence in me, and listened to my words.”

“Happy?” she cried piteously, and with her hand upon her heart.

“Yes,” he said; “happy till this letter came to-day – a letter that has swept all your promises to the winds, and sown dissension between us. Once more, will you show me the letter?”

“Once more,” cried Linny passionately, “no! You assume too much. Even if you were my father, you could do no more.”

“I stand to you, my dear child, in the place of your dead father. Your honour is as dear to me as it would have been to him.”

“My honour!” echoed Linny. “Stephen, you degrade me, by talking in this way before a comparative stranger.”

“Antony Grace is not a comparative stranger,” said Hallett quietly. “If he were your own brother he could not have acted better to us both. I speak out before him, because I look to Antony, boy though he be, to help me to watch over you and protect you, since you are so weak.”

“To act as your spy?”

“No,” he said sadly, “we will not degrade ourselves by acting as spies, but you force it upon me, Linny, to take stern measures. You refuse to show me this letter?”

“I do. I would die first!” cried Linny.

“My poor child,” he said sadly, “there is no need. I can read it in your transparent little face. You thought, I believe, in the first hot sting of your wrong that night, that you had plucked this foolish love from your breast; and so long as he remained silent you were at rest. But now he writes to you and says – ”

“Hush, Stephen! You shall not before Antony Grace.”

“Why not?” he cried. “He says in this letter that he has been wretched ever since; that he begs your pardon for the past; that upon your forgiveness depends his future; and he implores you, by all you hold sacred, to grant him an interview, that he may be forgiven.”

“Stephen!” cried Linny, but he went mercilessly on.

“And the foolish, trusting little heart, unused to the wiles of this world, leaped at the words, forgave him on the instant, and a brother’s words, her own promises, the vows of amendment, all are forgotten,” he said angrily, as his face now grew white and his hands clenched, “and all for the sake of a man who is an utter scoundrel!”

“How dare you!” cried Linny, and the hot passionate blood flashed to her little cheeks. Her eyes flamed, her teeth were set, and, in an access of rage, she struck her brother across the lips with the back of her hand. “How dare you call him a scoundrel?” she cried.

“Because,” said Hallett – while I stood by, unutterably shocked by the scene, which was the more intense from the low voices in which brother and sister spoke, they being in unison on the point that Mrs Hallett should not hear their quarrel – “because,” said Hallett, “his conduct is that of a villain. While professing love for you, he insults you. He tells you you are more dear to him than life, and he skulks like a thief and does not show his face. If he loved you – ”

“Love! What do you know of love?” cried Linny passionately. “You – you cold-blooded groveller, without soul to worship anything greater than that!”

As she spoke, she stood with her head thrown back, looking the picture of scorn and rage, as she contemptuously pointed at poor Hallett’s model; while he, weak, nervous, and overwrought – stung almost to madness, caught her sharply by the shoulder, and in her fear she sank on her knees at his feet.

“My God!”

Chapter Thirty Five.
I Build a Castle in the Air

If ever words were uttered with a wild intensity of fervour, it was that awful appeal; and, in the interval that followed, I felt my heart beat painfully, while Hallett, with the great drops standing on his knotted brow, clutched the little shoulder, so that Linny flinched from him.

“I cold-blooded – I know naught of love?” he whispered hoarsely; “when, for a year past, my life has been one long-drawn agony! I know naught of love, who have had to crush down every thought, every aspiration, lest I should be a traitor to the man whose bread I eat! Love? Girl, my life has been a torture to me, knowing, as I did, that I was a groveller, as you say, and that I must grovel on, not daring to look up to one so far above me, that – Heaven help me, what am I saying?” he cried, looking from one to the other. “Linny, for our dead father’s sake – for the sake of that poor, pain-wrung sufferer below, let there be no more of this. Trust me, child. Believe in me. I know so much of what you must suffer, that if he, whoever he be, prove only true and worthy of you, he shall be welcome here. But why raise this barrier between us? See, I am not angry now. It is all past. You roused that within me that I could not quell, but I am calm again, and, as your brother, I implore you, tell me who is this man?”

“I – I cannot,” said Linny, shaking her head.

“You cannot?”

“No,” she said firmly; “I gave my promise.”

“That you would not tell me – your own brother? Your mother then?”

“No, not now,” she said, shaking her head. “After a time I will.”

Without another word she turned and ran from the room, leaving Hallett gazing vacantly before him, as if suffering from some shock.

I went up to him at last. “Can I help you, Hallett?” I said; and he turned and gazed at me as if he had not understood my words.

“Antony,” he said at length, “a time back I should have thought it folly to make a friend and confidant of such a boy as you; but I have no man friend: I have shut myself up with those two below there, and when I have not been with them my hours have been spent here – here,” he said, pointing mockingly at the model, “with my love, and a strange, coquettish jade she is – is she not? But somehow, my boy, we two have drifted together, and we are friends, badly coupled as we may seem. You have heard what Linny said. Poor child, she must be saved at any cost, though I hardly know what course to pursue. There,” he said wearily, “let it rest for to-night; sometimes, in the thickest wilderness of our lives, a little path opens out where least expected, and something may offer itself even here.”

“I am very, very sorry, Hallett,” I said.

“I know it, my boy, I know it,” he said hurriedly; “but forget what you heard me say to-night. I was betrayed into speaking as I did by a fit of passion. Forget it, Antony, forget it.”

I did not answer, and he turned to me.

“I meant to have had a good work at the model to-night, but that little scene stopped it. Now about yourself. You are getting a sad truant from the office.”

He said it in a hesitating manner, and turned his face away directly after, but only to dart round in surprise at my next words.

“I am not coming back to the office any more – but don’t think me ungrateful.”

“Not coming back?”

“No, Hallett; Miss Carr sent for me – she has been away – and I am to go at once as a pupil to an engineer.”

He turned his back to me, and I ran to his side:

“Oh, Hallett,” I cried piteously; “don’t be angry with me. I told her I was sorry to go, because you were such a good friend.”

“You told her that, Antony?”

“Indeed, indeed I did; but I thought in being an engineer I might be some day such a help to you, and that it was for the best; and now you are vexed and think me ungrateful.”

He was silent for a few moments, and then he turned to me and took my hands, speaking in a low, husky voice:

“You must not heed me to-night, Antony,” he said. “You saw how upset and strange I was. This affair of Linny’s, and her letter, trouble me more than I care to own. No, no, my dear boy, I am not vexed with you, and I do not for a moment think you ungrateful.”

“You do not!” I cried joyfully.

“No, no, of course not. I rejoice to find that you have so good and powerful a friend in – Miss Carr. She must be – a truly good – woman.”

“She’s everything that’s good and beautiful and kind,” I cried, bursting into raptures about her. “I’m to have books and to go there every week, and she trusts to me to try and succeed well in my new life. Oh, Hallett, you can’t think how I love her.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder and gazed with a strange light in his eyes upon my eager face.

“That’s right,” he said. “Yes – love her, and never give her cause to blush for her kindness to you, my boy.”

He sat listening to me eagerly as I went on telling him her words, describing her home, everything I could think of, but the one subject tabooed, and of that I gave no hint, while he, poor fellow, sat drinking in what was to him a poisoned draught, and I unwittingly kept on adding to his pain.

“I’m only afraid of one thing,” I said with all a boy’s outspoken frankness.

“And what is that, Antony?”

“I’m afraid that when she is married to Mr Lister – ”

His hand seemed to press my shoulder more tightly.

“Yes,” he said in a whisper, “she is to be married to Mr Lister.”

“Yes, I knew that the first day I came to the office.”

“It is the common talk there,” he said with knitted brows. “And what is your fear, Antony?”

“That when she is married to Mr Lister she will forget all about me.”

“You wrong her, boy,” he said almost fiercely; and I stared at his strange display of excitement, for I had not the key then to his thoughts, and went on blindly again and again tearing open his throbbing wound.

“You wrong her,” he said. “Antony, Miss Carr is a woman to have won whose esteem is to have won a priceless gem, and he who goes farther, and wins her love, can look but for one greater happiness – that of heaven.”

He was soaring far beyond my reach, grovelling young mole that I was, and I said in an uneasy way that must have sounded terribly commonplace and selfish:

“You don’t think she will forget me, then?”

“No,” he said sternly. “There is that in her face which seems to say that she is one who never forgets – never forgives. She is no common woman, Antony; be worthy of her trust, and think of her name in your prayers before you sleep.”

I gazed at him curiously, he seemed so strange; and, noticing my uneasy looks, he said in a cheerful voice:

“There, we will not talk so seriously any more. You see how I trust you, Antony, in return for your confidence in me. Now let’s talk of pleasant things. An engineer, eh?”

“Yes,” I said, delighted at the change in his conversation. “I am glad of it – heartily glad of it,” he said with kindling eyes. “Linny is right; I do love and idolise my model, and you shall share her love, Antony. Together we will make her the queen of models, and if in time, perhaps years hence, I do perfect her – nay, if we perfect her – there, you see,” he said playfully, “I have no petty jealousies – you will then be engineer enough to make the drawings and calculations for the machines that are to grow from the model. Is it a bargain, Antony?”

“That it is,” I cried, holding out my hand, which he firmly clasped; and that night I went back to Revitts’ walking upon air, with my head in a whirl with the fancied noise of the machinery made by Hallett and Grace, while, out of my share of the proceeds, I was going down to Rowford to pay Mr Blakeford all my father’s debt; and then – being quite a man grown – I meant to tell him he was a cowardly, despicable scoundrel, for behaving to me as he did when I was a boy.